Xi’s Visit Brings No Breakthrough in China-South Korea Ties

Xi’s Visit Brings No Breakthrough in China-South Korea Ties
Chinese President Xi Jinping at Seoul National University, South Korea, July 4, 2014 (photo from the website of the Republic of Korea licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

Last week’s China-South Korea summit confirmed the good relations between Beijing and Seoul under Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. When they met in Seoul on July 3 for their fifth personal meeting since Park assumed office in March 2013, the two leaders announced ambitious economic goals and reconfirmed their opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Nonetheless, despite Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang’s pre-summit forecast that Xi’s trip would “take the strategic cooperative partnership between China and South Korea to a new level,” no breakthrough occurred, and their bilateral relationship remains essentially the same. Until Beijing distances itself from Pyongyang, it cannot fundamentally elevate its relations with Seoul.

During the summit, both leaders signed a dozen agreements on bilateral cooperation in trade, environment and energy. Park and Xi agreed to reinforce efforts to sign a bilateral free trade agreement by the end of this year, while also opening the way to direct currency exchanges of won and yuan, which can reduce transaction costs in bilateral trade by decreasing both sides’ reliance on the dollar as an intermediary currency.

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